Hinchinbrooke School Would Have To Be Demolished For Housing Proposal

Craig Bakay | Oct 30, 2024

The ultimate fate of the former Hinchinbrooke Public School has yet to be determined but following a visit from Habitat for Humanity Kingston CEO Gary Lees to the Oct. 22 regular Central Frontenac Council meeting in Sharbot Lake, eventual demolition of the building will be required if the five-acre parcel of land is to be used for housing.

There have been proposals in the past to use the building for recreational purposes and/or a mix of office/retail space, but the building would need costly renovations to remove hazardous materials used when it was built in 1966 as well as to conform with accessibility requirements that make it prohibitive to repair.

However, the Housing Committee reached out to Habitat for Humanity and invited Lees and Habitat board member Tina Hinch to a Council meeting.

“We’re looking to do developments — always,” Lees said. “(And) we’re looking for land.

“One of the biggest stumbling blocks with land is we need it to be build ready . . . we got into a project in downtown Kingston that wasn’t serviced and we’re into $1.5 million in servicing that.”

Lees said that the Frontenac County led concepts of communal servicing got him “excited.”

He said that from their perspective, accessible housing is just as important as affordable housing and that they would like to involve the two local high schools.

“It would be great to tap into some of these people to do a project and get the kids involved,” he said.

But, he said, they didn’t have a firm project in mind as yet.

“I think we may have gotten the cart in front of the horse a little bit talking about what we might do,” he said. “But we know the property has got to be build ready and so the school has got to go.”

Having said that, he said they might like to “have a look at doing a little bit of everything (including single detached, semi-detached, fourplex, condo setups).”

He said they have to have some residential ownership units but alternatives are possible to tap into other sources of revenue.

“I don’t know what the project looks like,” he said. “That will have to come from you . . . but we can make it happen.”

Mayor Frances Smith asked what assurances they could give to residents of the new properties being from Central Frontenac rather than Kingston.

“I don’t see that happening,” he said. “I don’t see how we can assure that but most people who want to live here are from here.”

Smith said it would be 2025 at the earliest before anything got moving on such a project.

“After we figure out if we’re going to be able to afford to get that building down in 2025,” she said. “But there are certainly going to be Town Hall meetings for public input before we go any further.”

Demolition of the school building is estimated to cost about $200,000. The Township bought the property from the Limestone District School Board along with the Sharbot Lake Public School property for $110,000 each.

Planning Continues

Council defeated a motion to defer having planning staff working on additional severance permission in the Official Plan until such time as Council has direction on where to support communal services, which would include updating the OP to include policies on communal servicing.

Planner Joe Gallivan told Council that the analysis of whether to change the severance numbers in the Official Plan is expected to take between 100 and 150 hours of planning and GIS staff at the County and the cost of that work would be billed to the Township in accordance with the respective service agreements.

Causeway Bridge Report

Council received a report that engineering for the bearings of the Sharbot Lake Causeway bridge is scheduled to begin. The report contains an anticipation that a section of Road 38 will have to be closed.

Funding for the project was included in the 2024 budget.

Holiday Hours

The municipal office will be closed Dec. 24-27, 2024 along with Jan. 1, 2025 for the holidays.

Regular office hours resume Jan. 2, 2025.